What online harassment tells us about our newsrooms: From individuals to institutions - A Women's Media Center report

Newsroom leaders must do more to protect journalistsfrom digital threats

Online abuse, harassment, and hate are shaping media in unprecedented ways. Facing tactics ranging from rape and death threats to impersonation and privacy invasions, journalists have necessarily had to alter how they select, investigate, and cover the news.

Ever-expanding digital threats to journalists are usually considered from the perspective of how individuals should protect themselves from external bad actors. This report, however, looks at online harassment and its connection to internal corporate culture, shedding light on the relationship between online harassment and systemic bias in the newsroom. In it, we share research, recommendations, and interviews, in addition to key insights drawn from an October 2019 convening, “What Online Harassment Tells Us About Our Newsrooms: From Individuals to Institutions.”

This symposium focused on why online harassment is a global threat to freedom of expression, the press, and democracy. Participants included industry leaders Mitra Kalita (senior vice president, news, opinion, and programming, CNN Digital & Programming); Raju Narisetti (who has overseen news operations at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Gizmodo Media Group, and is founder of India’s Mint newspaper); Nicole Carroll (editor-in-chief, USA Today); Soraya Chemaly (director of the WMC Speech Project); and Siri Chilazi (research fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School), an expert in advancing women and promoting gender equality within organizations.

We hope that this report will further shape the discussion around online abuse and harassment in America’s newsrooms and lead to change that ensures the safety of journalists.

Julie Burton
President and CEO
Women’s Media Center

Press release: New report: Online harassment and digital threats to journalists